Tuesday, December 09, 2014

Just another word for nothing left to lose

I'd love to write about something else, like the early bills filed at the Lege or Houston city charter revisions or something similarly compelling, but no.

“What I keep hearing out there is they portray this as a rogue operation, and the agency was way out of bounds and then they lied about it,” (Dick) Cheney said in a telephone interview with the New York Times on Monday. “I think that’s all a bunch of hooey. The program was authorized. The agency did not want to proceed without authorization, and it was also reviewed legally by the Justice Department before they undertook the program.”

That's an admission of guilt to a war crime, as defined by the Geneva Convention accords.

“It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information,” former CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a letter to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2011, disputing Bush administration claims that torture helped capture bin Laden. “In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.”

Oh, and the executive director of the ACLU thinks the torturers should all be pardoned. Which is just the latest, freshest steaming pile of shit for the rest of us to eat, served on a silver platter by the above-and-beyond authorities running things in this so-called free country.

This issue is not
separate from the killings by police around the country. It's just more
evidence that America is stuck in a period of lawlessness and brutality
that we seem unable to face. It is endemic in federal agencies, in
most if not all law enforcement at Ferguson level right up to 935
Pennsylvania Avenue, and in, of course, Congress -- in Cleveland, West
Florissant Avenue, and Staten Island...

Lawlessness is rampant
in every level of our justice system, from corrupt local prosecutors to
the connection between big money and our highest court.